


As time goes on

by Kasan_Soulblade



Series: Fragments and what we spy by them [4]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: F/M, Gen, Malicious Summon Spirits, Reincarnation, The End of the world, post ToS speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-13 15:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2155419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their story wasn't over.  The roles, of heroes and angels, and powers that be, those books were closed.  But for the people who wore them, they wold endure on until death.  And after.</p><p>He never believed in the here-after, reincarnation, or the like, but through the centuries he's seen them again and again.  Not the saviors of his time, but all the others.</p><p>But the world wasn't immortal, it came and went in cycles and stages.  He'd balked at reincarnation of a world, even when he saw it for the world's people.  Permanency though was his last illusion, and when it came down, it came down hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the beginning: spite

**Author's Note:**

> To my readers,
> 
> A rather morose piece, Yuan centric because he's easiest to write, especially about this topic.
> 
> Honestly I was going to end Shards with something much like this (more upbeat actually but yeah that didn't work, also Noishe is just too hard to write long term) I found the notes and decided not only did I need to finish it but my narrator was going to have to be someone else.
> 
> Since Yuan's one of my TOS muses (AU verse mainly) and a rather somber soul it fit.
> 
> So warnings, normally I leave them all in the tags but this is a rather long ranging piece and I didn't want to bog the lot down: 
> 
> There's going to be discussion of the here-after (not a parallel for my own beliefs, but the lot might be triggery), the end of the world, the atrocities, petty cruelties that can manifest during, and all that wonderful stuff. Also Yuan is depressed and at times can be very depressing despite his stoic dry humored front. Also my take on the Summon Spirits, they can be absolute monsters and saints, sometimes at the same moment. All the main cast die, some are reborn, some simply don't make it in later times, and some of them meet rather vile ends.
> 
> Also there are some rather personal matters I vent about along the way, using the situational and... yeah this is more for my benefit than anyone else's, still I hope there's some enjoyment factor for those who read this bit of catharsis.
> 
> Again this is not a happy piece, and it may not end well. Consider your own mind before continuing onward. This is the sole warning for the lot, consider your mindset, emotional equilibrium before going forward .
> 
> Thank you,  
> Kasan Soulblade

_ In the Beginning. _

_They were legends, lovers, and at the end of their era there was nothing more than memories._

_Because it wasn't her, never her, and he'd never forgive the creature that took her place for it._

 

In the beginning there was spite,

 

Mere months after a world’s rebirth they meet and dance.

She’s intrigued by his visit. Slipping out of sapling at his approach. She watches him, bare feet screened by coils of grass, staff more branch than walking aid, in hand. Her robes are green and likely woven of chlorophyl and dew firmed by memories, framed by fancy.

She brings no memories for him. Curious that. She looks so much like the woman whose name she stole, yet she stirs nothing in him.

She is a stranger earing his beloved’s form, her garb a mockery for it was what Martel had planned to wear on their wedding day.

Perhaps it’s spite that has him garbed in Renegade black. Sleek pants, tight tunic, with a best too dark to be sky blue and too pale to be anything else.

His steel toe boots leave scratches and scars in the soil; little flowers are likely decapitated and crushed at his coming. She wiggles her toes, the grass rustles in rebuke, it’s a pointed hint he doesn’t take.

Rather he stops a few steps away from the Tree, then extends a hand. To that baffled head tip (hers and stolen) he smiles. The gesture does not reach his eyes.

“You have her memories.” Statement of fact.

She nods anyway, confirming a darker truth he doesn’t want to hear. “Her soul”

“Then I don’t need to say anything else.”

And he doesn’t, she takes his hand and they dance. Though delicate looking her hands are bark tough, though warm it is the fickle waning warmth of wooden plane lingering in the sun with the sun’s failing to give it a ghost of chill.

She has no pulse.

Neither does he, the difference being that he had a heart once upon a time (when they were legends and not awful horrid truths) and sometimes the echoes of its dying shudder stir his soul to life.

Near the end they are caress close. Another mockery, affection mimed but not felt. He leans close and into her ear speaks.

“I’d like my wife back”

The thing with her from hums noncommittally.

“Sooner rather than later.”

Green eyes consider him, she smiles. “When I am done,” the smile lighters her eyes, unlike all of his thus far. “And only then.”

His memories guild him, even as he guilds her through the next few steps, and the span when they must part is upon them. To seek new partners, they’ve traversed a series of stately things, ending in something akin to a jug where others must be, but there are none. She tightens her grip, it has something of brambles to it. Thus he is jarred out of recollection that has carried them this far.

“You don’t look at me with the love she remembers.”

Simple truth, casualest cruelty.

“I don’t love you.”

Her answering glare assures he’ll wait millennia for that.

To the threat in her regard he’s unmoved; he has time until time’s end.

She does not.

They part without speaking any more words.


	2. Chapter 2

As Time..

Part 2

Familiar

The Renegades came to him. Seeping out from corners and crevices thought too extreme for Yggdrasil to find them dare he look. Truth teases his tongue, Yggdrasil never meant to. He’d of simply flown away, leaving all to die in his passing.

He spares them his truth and welcomes them back.

And yes, the celebrations are uproarious. He attends a few, because why not, new world and all that. Watered down dark potions actually will get him drunk –it’s taken nearly four thousand years for him to find something that will- and they find a truth he’s always known. He’s a maudlin drunk, so after his first public spat of intoxication in centuries he’s asked to be the designated driver for their outings.

Never mind no one’s going anywhere.

So he nods and smiles and says why not.

Then when the hangovers hit he whips out the most vile of folk remedies he can recall. No one dies. Many complain. He threatens to demote the whiniest and all’s well for a while.

XX

The King of Tethe’alla seeks audience. With a legend. With a Seraph. Painfully obvious is the plan to absorb the Renegades into the archaic monarchy, their machines and scientists would be an unspeakable boon to either side of the worlds.

Little does he know that part of a Renegades oath is to denounce both kingdoms. Outsiders they’ll be outsider they’ll die.

The man receives four Seraph, three Sylvaranti though he only knows that Aurion’s boy is of Sylvarant.

So they walk across toe numbing soft carpets (and never mind his altered tactile sensations and boots he’s still feeling those plush rugs and rather amused because of it) he and Aurion’s child, and the Chosen and Death himself, all come and none dare deny him.

They all have a lot to say.

Well _they_ have a lot to say, Yuan’s just there to say no.

While the blonde girl child tries to mediate a peace for a war surely coming and Aurion’s boy loses his speech and worships her with his eyes Yuan waits. Then Kratos Aurion, wings drawn, both gory and glorious, cuts his soon to be daughter in law off.

“You have a chance to rise above the errors of your predecessors, do not waste it. This world will not tolerate another failure.”

Will divine right smite us, if we do fail to do so?” The King jeers, once sacrilege it’s a reasonable question despite the scorn it’s delivered in.

“The time of angels and summoners is over. Though the line may endure no spirit will be bound, ever again. Mana itself will tolerate no mortal hands upon it. It is mana’s time to go fallow least it utterly be drained away and the whole world wither. Your technologies that thrive on such will fail, your arcana will fail, you’ve three generation to prepare. So swears Origin, and he will not be swayed by any mortals plea.”

“That’s cheerful.” Because the silence of the humans before him, of all of Tethe’alla’s “enlightened” is getting to be a bit much and well… why not? That mood seems to have infected Yuan quite strongly this month. He’ll have to be careful, least it make him reckless.

“Enough of this. All who’ve red the scriptures know the Angel of Death brings forth prophecy that may or may not come to pass.” The King drawls, treating Kratos as he would have any other man. Never mind a mere moth ago the sighting of Kratos with his wings drawn would have instigated riots and senseless death. “I’ve no interest in hearing any of your warnings or pleas, my offer was for Mer. Vriseen leaders of the Gades, and it’s he who I will be speaking to. Is he among your number?”

“It’s Mister Vor’esse.” Yuan sighed, trading poise for bluntness, suddenly just tired of it all. There’s a titter, definitely Sylvarant’s Chosen and he flicks her a small smile. Because just like Martel she knows what’s coming and is somewhat relishing it. “Your excellency,” he nods, doesn’t bow, as a Sylvaranti he should not, as a Renegade he will not. “And I am leader of the Renegades, not the Gades. We are an anti-Cruxian organization that has been in operation for thousands of years. And if Aurion is right, then I’ve less business being here than you do.”

One bushy eyebrow rose. “I am certain… Mister Vor’esse… that you will not allow the superstitious ranting’s of this winged heritic…”

“Dad’s an angel, how can he be a heratic?” Lloyd wondered, a bit loud for manners sake and Colette was hushing him and trying not to laugh while Kratos was rolling his eyes. “Regardless-“ The king tried to bring this meeting back to order.

Key word here would be trying.

“Regardless,” Yuan drawled, shuffling his arms so when he crossed them his cape wasn’t tangled amongst them. The bat jokes hat headquarters were bad enough, thank you. “You hear, from Origin’s own mouth piece, that the very system of natural laws you run your kingdom on is going to expire and here you sit, as if nothing is wrong, and try to ignore it. You’re a fool then, and I hope when you’re executed for it it’s simple as a hanging. You’d deserve as much.”

Color mounted the old man’s face, and where others would have quailed Yuan smirked.

“I think, half elf, that you don’t understand who you are dealing with.” The King warned, in tones that told of grit teeth and rising blood pressure.

“I don’t think you do. My earthly titles, your majesty, far out strip your own. I am Lord Cardinal de Triet, in my domain all live and die at my command. My territories encompass Triet and Iselia, both ripe with natural resources that both your kingdom and Sylvarant’s would lose out on if I am irked. Iselia is perhaps the most fertile region of both countries, the bread bowl of Aeseilian in Kharlanic lore, and Triet had a slew of mines across its parched back, you’ll find both food and raw minerals cut off. With the dwarves shutting down their mines and sealing off all of Moria, the very earth itself, you’ve no other recourse save trade with Triet. Disregarding that, my Celestial powers outstrip your own Pope’s as, like Kratos, I am a Seraph, _Derris fa Or’reith Fel_. Try to sick your clerical powers at me, I’ll simply demote them. Then there is my historical nominative…” Yuan drawled, and Kratos actually snickered, surely knowing what was coming. “Ah yes, as part of the peace treaty I was granted… what was it again Kratos?”

With a small smile and flick of his wings Kratos informed the uneducated masses of one simple truth that derailed any and all plans of military conquest.

“Your title was Supreme General de Tethe’alla . You were granted formal complete military powers over all of Tethea’lla’s military for services rendered to the empire during the Kharlan wars. As I was granted ultimate power over Sylvarant’s armies.”

“I’m sure we don’t need to state the obvious at this point.” Yuan concluded.

“Those powers were granted by the crown.” The King snarled. “Centuries… no millennia ago. _They_ have no power, _you_ hold no power.”

“Our power, like yours, is bound by the treaties of the Kharlan war. To dissolve any aspect of the pact made on Derris Kharlan you’d not only have to dissolve your church, but your monarchy.” Kratos rumbled, wings rustled, blood splattering upon the down soft carpets. “The laws that protect you from scrutiny would be revoked. How long would your nation last, if the people were to be told of your true activities, the atrocities that have been done in your name, in your time? Disregarding that, any monarch that violates those laws abdicates his crown for the church upholds the monarchy; you cannot have one without the other. It was designed that way and in the four thousand years since their drafting your people haven’t changed enough that they can survive without this system in place.”

“And Sylvarant can, for it is the better purer kingdom?” The King snarled.

“Hardly, they are less technological advanced of the two, they have no government. Neither is ideal, but that is the hand fate had dealt you, and you must survive. Not by conquest though.” Death warned. “Never think of that. The consequences will be unspeakable.”

Silence, then with something like a bow Kratos turned on his heal, marched out.

“Classy as always.” Yuan murmured to Aurion’s back.

“You’re far too fascinated with subtlety.” Kratos complained, both their heels were clicking, steel finding the stuff under carpet, to their backs there was a uproar, as noblemen plied King with questions and demands, many were the scandals brewing at their back. Idly Yuan wondered which spies he might employ to drop off certain sensitive documents into the more rebellious’ hands.

“Well it’s improvement.” The blue haired seraph noted. “Last time you threatened to cut off all their heads, this time you just threatened to dismantle their armies.”

“You made that threat!” Aurion snarled. “Not I.”

“No your hinting that you’d rally Sylvarant though were a fetching touch.”

“Dad, you didn’t!” Aurion’s boy protested.

“The cleanup was unspeakable.” Yuan drawled, referring to atrocities ages past.

“Because it didn’t happen.” Death countered, trying to salvage his reputation as best he could. “And I’m not going to, unless the Kings more a fool than you think.”

“If you must know my intelligence informs me he still struggles with multiplication and division.”

“Oh dear…” Chosen murmured. Her pink wings were born with a shimmer of light and their flutter and droop was quite disheartened.

The procession now had all their wings drawn. They’d quit halls for an open air courtyard, and decided wordlessly to stretch as it were. The younger angels had it easy as their wings were more light than substance and fanciful besides. Though Aurion’s boy had the longer more falcon like wings and the Chosen's were hintings of a feathered butterfly than to anything from the scriptures it made an interesting contrast to the blood seeped blue and silver atrocities jutting out of Kratos’ back or the more feminine ones Yuan sported.

Color was, because of them, a disputable affair. With the Chosen’s wings, well everything about her was colored in blushes and roses. Portable rose tinted glasses. He said as much and she countered his wings weren’t much better. Aurion’s boy was making the world a bit more silver and setting their vests and cloaks to flapping as he warmed up and Aurion senior had what few shadows dared remain a blue tint and had everything about him shivering.

He was also lowering the temperature as all their breath was steaming and ice was forming on some of the closest flora.

People scattered, a few screamed, and one zealous escapee went through a stained glass window. Ground level, luckily for him.

“I’m still ticked at how they exiled Zelos.” Lloyd grumbled, trying to stretch his wings and not hit anyone and stay in comfortable conversational distance.

Quite a feat really, shame he had succeeded.

“So was Sheena, she sicced Efreet on their western border all her clan got clear in the chaos.” Yuan reported.

“Still spying I see.” Aurion’s boy grumbled.

“It’s what I do.”

“Well thank goodness everyone got away.” Colette sighed. “Has anyone heard about Regal and Persea?”

“Exire.” Kratos reported. “As are the Sages.”

“So everyone’s safe then.” Lloyd nodded. “Good.”

“But well…” Heaving a sight the girl’s pink wings clung close, as if seeking to shelter her from her own truths. “The guards at the border, and there were people chasing after Regal, weren’t there?”

Considering who she questioned the past tense wasn’t the question. But then her tone wasn’t an accusation either. Leaving that mystery as it should be, a mystery, Yuan considered sky. And the nearing clink a link of armored boots drawing near.

“I doubt Efreet was merciful.” Kratos hedged. “And as you know I am not.”

To that bluntness the two children Seraph winced.

“I’ve places to go and things to do.” Yuan cut in, not really caring for their drama and the bonding that was due to occur after it.

“Indeed,” Death considered his charges, then Yuan. “As do we.”

“Well…” Acting oblivious, or perhaps simply that oblivious to the drawing voices and the rattle of sword being drawn, the blond child embraced him. Minding his wings and most recent scar (how she’d seen it, much less known the flesh was still tender was another mystery… one that Yuan was content to allow be for a time) “Have a good flight Mr. Yuan.”

Then she let go, still upset but smiling bravely. She skipped back to her boyfriend taking his hand in her own.

Smirking, looking so much like his father, Lloyd Aurion met Yuan’s eyes. “Yeah, try not to crash into anything, who knows you might fly in a straight line… Yuna.”

He could have corrected, disputed, blasted the brat with an Indignation Judgment spell.

Manners he supposed, were a trait he was going to have to require. With Death regarding him and literally with a wing about his son Yuan wasn’t going to try anything now. Later, well he might, possibly.

But with the promise of a world about to change beyond recognition Yuan figured probably not.

“Ch-“ No manners, and perhaps something more spurred him past the safety of titles. “Colette, a pleasant flight. Aurion spawn, go to hell.”

Yuan managed to get airborne before Kratos’ answering Grave spell was loosed. Still it was a close thing. He lost a good boot to one of those earthen blades.

The light at his back, as Yuan flew forward, and though he was too jaded for anything like wonder, he did note that it was akin to the auras upon the northern spires of the world. It wasn’t beautiful, or breathtaking, (light could never, ever be those things for him again, and two thousand years of him staring out his window and staring upon the auras of the world made it nearly dull) but the sight did slow his flight for a little, and he lingered, amused at the overlap of pseudo natural phenomenon over the synthetic spires Tethe’allan’s so loved.

A scream and an arrow shot his way got him going towards gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this was a partial take that at the Rodeo Tour CD dramas that they made. I mean, seriously I just can't see the group breaking up and not watching each others backs to some extent considering that it's mentioned by many cast members in game that they're expecting things to go mad after Cruxis is shut down for good.
> 
> Kratos' wing style and title (as well as Yuan's) are part of my "Shards/Unkindness" head canon, Kratos' title means angel of death. Yuans.. well that's a bit of a spoiler so I'm leaving that left unsaid.
> 
> Nothing else needs clarifying I think so I'll leave it as is for now.


	3. Chapter 3

The Familiar:  Considerations

_Because he had considered it all his life, and he had no answers, he never would._

_None that could be considered right anyway._

 

“The problem with strong arming people is that the second you leave they just go back to whatever they were doing in the first place.”

Walking alone the glass and crystal flakes of Derris Kharlan’s lone beach of semiprecious minderals grind under each step. Krat’s alstark statement rung in the collective minds of the gathered Seraph. There are four now, Zelos has crushed his crystal and though it’s not here Yuan wonders at the occasional red ruby bits and wonder if it’s kin to that recently shattered stone. Colette spent the walk holding Lloyd’s hand, he holding hers, their drawn wings setting little rainbows of blushing and quicksilver all about them

“What your sating is people don’t change, because if you are we’re so gunna rehash the last two years of my life.” Lloyd threatened, taints,, and to that of-so-horrifying offer Kratos smiles.

“I wouldn’t mind that.”

They retired to Kratos' apartments, a small palace of empty rooms of the beach twisted into bilars and walls and roofing. Paintings were scattered about, more of mundane things, plants, animals, nature, and there was a bed though that was dust covered and a library that was the least dust of them all.

Beyond that there were no signs of life or the person who lived here.

Well, there’d also been a bowl. Dust coated like the bed.

Likely Noishe’s, unless Mrs. Aurion was a odd one.

Wisely Yuan did not voice his internal commentary.

“Do you have a house like Kratos’; Mr. Yuan?” Colette queried, quivered, even as the Aurion men padded off to investigate a maybe kitchen in the back.

“No child.” Mithos let me know I wasn’t welcome long ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

And who wouldn’t be, four thousand years of kinship of shared existence and Yuan had nothing material to show for it. Most would be crushed. Surely she was if those tears about her eyes meant anything.

“I’m not.” Meeting those so vulnerable eyes, blue like his, tender like Martel's, he smiled. “Really, I’m not.”

To such stark sincerity she hugged him anyway, though nothing was wrong.

Nothing at all.

XXX

They ate, more to recall how to than out of need. Of the four only one could taste, two could sleep, and their elders were not so luck as he younger two. So when the children were satisfied and busy with little things like sleeping both Seraph stepped outside to talk.

Having wings they set to the sky. And alighted to some precarious spire of no import and talked.

Or rather Kratos dictated and expected Yuan to listen.

“So, now what?” Yuan drawled, tucking his wings close, no breeze threatened to push them open and set him a flight. Still some instincts were hard to shake.

“The peoples need to make their own fate. They have been denied that for too long.”

“Dismantling Cruxis than, that would be step one. Easy enough with Mithos gone.”

“We’ll need to do the same with the Renegades.”

Tuck non withstanding Yuan’s wings bristled. Feathers fluffed in fury even as the Seraph grit his teeth and felt Volt near. Touch close and spell ready at the idea that he-

“She’s been dead over two thousand years Yuan, you need to let her go.”

Because the Renegades had been her, for her, her name even. Not for Martel, or his own bitter disappointments. It was a desperate attempt to appease the departed.

A fathers last failed attempts to make things right.

“Like you’ll let go of Lloyd, of Anna, you’ve no right to make that request of me.”

A pained hiss, decades old the wound was no less raw.

Idly Yuan dithered between salt and acid.

“Two thousand years, grieving a child you stole and raised as your own.  It's pathetic really, she never was your own.”

Adopted actually, as if reciting such a banal thought made it any easier though.

Well it did in one way, acid it was then.

“It’s been one thousand nine hundred eighty three years, six months and nine days since she died. If you count the day of her capture as one of her being alive that was. Considering it took her two days of being tortured, partial transformed, and the transfusion and Chosen process failing during that span it was technically nine days. If you don’t count those days it’s been six.” Silence as Yuan considered stars and Kratos the ground. Fair, more than, considering who’d dragged her in. “Tell me, how long did it take Yggdrasil to force you to kill Anna? An hour, more?”

“I… I tried… there was no antidote…”

“Days then?’

“One.”

“And how long has it been since Anna died Kratos? How long until Lloyd dies?”

And though Kratos surely knew the former (and possible the latter) he said nothing. From the edge of this little world a light turned on. Squinting his blue eyes at that intrusion of an ocular slant Yuan faintly caught a glimpse of gold.

There was no gold on Derris Kharlan, so it was imported then.

To that sally Yuan’s lips quirked in something like good humor.

“The Chosen’s awake.”

“Colette.”

To Kratos’ correction Yuan said nothing, waited and waited.

Finally: “Consider it, please.”

Then opening wings both glorious and gruesome Kratos was off, flying to a home that wasn’t his.

Yuan did not follow. Was content to count those precious seeming lights in the dark for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kratos and Yuan are discussing the Renegades, though meaningful in english the name has specific meaning in my angelic language.
> 
> Gadius means "the children of" or "the descendents of" and Rene is the name of Yuan's adopted daughter.
> 
> It goes a long way to explain Shard'verse Yuan's attachment to the Renegades, as he views them as his child's children and treats them accordingly. Yuan's snark back at Kratos is a call back to the ending of "Double Edged Sword" (soon to be edited, I'm about halfway done, when it's done in full I'll post it up on a day off), where Kratos tries and fails to cure Anna of the exebula infliction that Yggdrasil and Kvar inflict upon her.


End file.
